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Starfield’s Mod Scene Has Officially Exploded
1.4k Plays4 months ago
In this episode, Duane talk about minimalism, video game loot, and the huge explosion of Mods in Starfield given the release of Creation Kit. We also talk about how Shattered Space will make changes to how you play #Starfield.
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Check out Oliver’s Starfield Comic Book, The Radiant Huntress!
https://linktr.ee/radianthuntress
Check out our cinematic edit of The Vulture in Starfield:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Starfield with Normal People
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey Starborns, this is Olivier Le Perat and Bebe Vasco welcoming you to Starfield with normal people.
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to a new episode of Starfield with normal people. My name is Dwayne and I am here with my friend Michael. Michael, how are you? This lovely, lovely week. Oh, I'm doing great. Just trying to stay away from the sun, the evil hot sun and just stay inside as much as possible. it's It's like Mario Brothers. Remember when the sun tries to kill you? That's how it is here. yeah That is is very, very accurate. Yeah. Yeah. but We want to do a star field comparison.
Las Vegas Sun vs Game Environment
00:00:49
Speaker
I go outside and instantly I started getting radiation poisoning. Yeah. So I get that star field experience. You're getting killed by the environment as soon as you step outside. There is a big difference between direct sunlight and shade. like If you can find shade, that is the most valuable ah you know real estate here in Las Vegas. yeah In terms of like parking lots and just pretty much standing around. like Because it's a dry heat, as everyone always jokes about, like literally standing in the shade, it's not that bad.
00:01:20
Speaker
The shade does, yeah, it helps a lot. As soon as you like walk out into that line of where the sun starts, your skin begins to sizzle. Our family, generally we plan things like like dinner. is Dinner's not till after eight. like if If we're making dinner at home, it's what you know it's normal dinner time. But if we wanna go somewhere, it's like as soon as the sun starts to dip behind the mountains, yes that's when it's like, time. It's terrible. so Right. Yeah, I've been barbecuing for some unknown reason and I'm standing next to a grill questioning my life choices because the grill ambient temperature is about 140 before you even turn it on because it's a black grill in the sun. So yeah it's a real challenge to actually cook ah without burning everything because everything starts at higher temperature. I don't know.
00:02:13
Speaker
Maybe I need a new girl. Maybe that's what
Oliver's Comic - The Radiant Huntress
00:02:16
Speaker
it is. Oh, by the way, I do want to thank Oliver for doing that lovely intro for us. Yeah. Just so you know who Oliver is, he's part of our community. He's actually one of our mods in the Discord. Oliver is building a name for himself as well because Oliver's got a friggin comic book that he's working on every week. The Radiant Huntress. It's called The Radiant Huntress. You can find it online. He does post it in our Discord, so you can check it out there, but he also has a Facebook page for it as well, and we will link that in our show notes. But it is a Starfield comic book. Right. It's so well done, and it's been awesome to see the evolution of that comic strip because he started out in Starfield Adventure Club
00:03:04
Speaker
posting screenshots and then it became a story and then it became ah its own dedicated thread. And then he started using AI to help kind of ah fill out the story yeah yeah and the story elements. It's yep it's become like a full blown, high quality comic. And actually we yeah we got our first member to the Discord through his comic, at least that they actually brought it up. And they said, I found your Discord because of Oliver's Radiant Huntress. Because of the Radiant Huntress. Yeah, really cool, really cool.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah. And he actually is the moderator for our drive channel. And a little bit later we'll play ah a message from Oliver inviting you all to participate in our monthly drive challenge.
Building Spaceships in Starfield
00:03:50
Speaker
And I want to ah put this out there. In the early days of SAC, the starfield adventure club, we gave away mugs. We stopped doing it, it's pretty expensive, and we just, ah you know, there's we started to do it every week, so we couldn't really keep up with that. But I wanna bring the mug back, and I wanna bring it back, especially, or specifically, I should say, for Drive. So if you head over to our Drive channel. And what is Drive? What is Drive, you asked Michael? Well, Drive is deep space research and interstellar vehicle engineering. Wow.
00:04:27
Speaker
That's kind of tough to say, but in a nutshell, it's building spaceships in Starfield. So if you have any interest in that, and there's actually been some really cool basic tutorials or just tips on how to do it. One of the great tips is just to grab the razor crest or some of the other ships that you get for free along the way. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You said razor crest? Is that from Mandalorian? Yeah, I did. The razor leaf? The razor leaf. Grab the razor leaf if you have it and just do a basic mod to that. With mods, you probably can grab the razor crest.
00:05:07
Speaker
Exactly. I actually I think I've seen somebody made the razor crest in starfield. So there you go Yeah, the drive channel in our discord is a great place where where people can just share You know your ship builds and we've seen some amazing stuff even amazing paint jobs but yes, the contest is coming back and And yeah, we'll give away a coffee mug for sure. We've also done a bunch of really, if you're new to the podcast or Discord, you can go back and do some of the early challengers. I think there was like a small ship challenge. Yeah, that was my favorite one. Yeah, yeah. That was my favorite one. That was super cool. Tiny ships. Tiny ships. The tinier the better. And it was like they had to be tiny, but they had to function. Right.
00:05:53
Speaker
It couldn't just be something you created that didn't work within the editor. It had to be fully functional. Yeah. it's just It's just one cockpit with a grab drive. I actually wish I could i wish i could build that. yeah um That'd be fun. It's like this whole tiny house thing. You know, people either grabbing containers and turning it into tiny houses. and Would you live in a tiny house? You know, I've thought about it. um we've We've thought about like all the the pros and cons and stuff. ah Ultimately, no, because we... I wouldn't say we have ah a big house at all, but we have a house that has ah so a pretty good amount of space, and yet there still isn't a spot for everything. like they Like, we still struggle with, oh, I don't have a place to put that.
00:06:44
Speaker
thing or though the the you know the gear or whatever and um a tiny house dude you just you couldn't have any belongings you would have to go full on minimalist which there's a part of me that loves that idea just kind of like shedding all this yeah junk in in your life and and the burdens that come along with it You should hear me anytime my wife or kids are at any point if they're like, huh, I wonder if I should get rid of this. And I'm like, do it. If you're wondering, let's go. It's just let's take it to the, you know, take it to savers. For a while there, I had like a ideology of a six month thing. Like if I didn't use it, if I didn't wear it, if I don't care about it after six months, it's gone. But it's so hard to live by that because you get nostalgic about things. so Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
That's a tough thing. it's like It's like when kids, they haven't played with a toy in two years, and then they see it and start playing with it. They see it when they're cleaning you're cleaning out their room, and they're like, oh, yeah that thing. That happens with adults too. like You see something, and then you're like, oh, you know yeah, you remember. I have this video game paraphernalia. like I have this necklace that I got for Assassin's Creed a long time ago. And um it's just it's in a drawer. It's in a drawer. And then and then I'll see it. I'm like, I should get rid of this because it's just in a drawer. I don't do anything with it. and But then I can't do it. I'm like, oh, but, you know, I got this at that you know convention. Right. you You need to keep it for that time when you decide to cosplay as the lead from Assassin's Creed. That's right. Does he wear in game? Yeah. Is that where it's from?
00:08:24
Speaker
No, I don't think so. I think it's just a... It's a shark stew. It's just like a logo. It's a puka shell. Puka shell. Nice. Yeah. From my, from my Sugar Ray days. Oh, wow. I just got a visual. Oh, man. Well, Michael, you know, it has
Canceled Elder Scrolls Mod Project
00:08:44
Speaker
nothing absolutely to do with puka shells whatsoever. Oh, whatever it is, I'm ready for it. project Tamriel, which is an elder scrolls focused mod that would have imported all of Tamriel into star fields, uh, and to starfield yeah has been canceled. Oh, that's unfortunate, which is kind of a bummer. Two weeks ago, I saw a bunch of news outlets pick this up in terms of like, Hey, this new huge mod.
00:09:11
Speaker
is coming out for Starfield, and a lot of people are excited. Yeah. And then for the podcast, I went to kind of grab one of those news stories, and then I saw that it had been canceled, so I was kind of bummed out. Yeah. I know you were a big Skyrim fan. Yeah. Would you have any interest in seeing this? I mean, it's super ambitious. so I can understand if there's not, like, ah overwhelming support. And actually, the reason why it was canceled was Newstar 340, which is the name of one of the modders. explained that after sharing the initial concept with the community it became clear that the support we were hoping for just wasn't there. What? That's surprising. Apparently they didn't get either thousands or hundreds of uh starfield players didn't come out and say hey we really want this or maybe they're saying from
00:09:59
Speaker
the development side from Bethesda themselves. I have a feeling it's from the community, but they didn't really explicitly say. That surprises me because I remember when Starfield first, you know, a year ago launched that long video presentation and then they talked about how they wanted it to be a modder's paradise and that they'd have all these empty planets, right? Or maybe you can create your own planet. And I remember one of the first things that I saw and then I saw it often was people were saying we want to put Skyrim on a planet. that I don't know. I saw that so much. So maybe they weren't seeing like support directly where people were going to their I don't know where they were posting Twitter, Facebook, whatever and saying
00:10:49
Speaker
hey we support you but man i feel like everyone was excited at the possibility of a tamriel map or a skyrim map something like that um whether they said it or not new star 340 if you're out there listening to this Why don't you take an element of Skyrim or a small section city area that you really loved about Skyrim, start with that, put that as a mod into the game, see where it goes, see if you get more ah support from the community.
00:11:26
Speaker
because that could be the impetus you need to expand it. yeah Part of me is saying Skyrim is a standalone game. Do we need to import it into Starfield? Like what is the purpose of that? We love Skyrim, right? But do we need it inside of Starfield? what That's a lot of work and for what? purpose. To me, no. To make it look better. Well, there you go. Actually, you kind of just said it on one hand, to make it look better. One of my favorite games of all time is Skyrim. And i I see this from people in our Discord who came into Bethesda either through Fallout or even Starfield.
00:12:03
Speaker
Some of them have gone back and tried to play Skyrim and it's too dated for them. Now it's not for me because I played it a ton when it was new. So for i so I have those nostalgia goggles. Sure. I'm like Cypher in The Matrix where he says he doesn't even see the code anymore. I don't see the bad graphics. I just see this beautiful place. Yeah, is that worth it though? All this work of trying to import it into Starfield. And hey, maybe it's easier than I'm thinking because it's built on the creation engine as well. So perhaps it's as simple as importing the code and then somehow linking it and enabling it
00:12:46
Speaker
You know, I'm sure it's still rather difficult. it Yeah, it strikes me as one of those things that could be easy and then also very difficult, like where you can import it, but it's going to have problems. Hey, start with the Skyrim outfits and swords and stuff like that. Like put me in the Skyrim outfit and maybe give me a location on a planet. Start there. this is what you need to do is you just need to and I know nothing about modding so this is just me that my opinion means whatever it means but don't try to import the entire map or put the entire game of Skyrim into starfield but yeah like build out NPCs that look like Skyrim
00:13:32
Speaker
people, right and then just some building, some huts, some houses, and make settlements that are just on this far away planet. right and because that's You and I have talked about that in a past episode where it'd be interesting to discover a planet where they don't either don't have technology or you know they they probably came from Earth so they lost their technology or they choose not to have technology that would be fascinating in starfield then they had stuff like that in star trek primitive peoples yeah i was just about to bring up star trek the prime Directive which is yeah to interfere with primitive civilizations and give them technology that they haven't discovered themselves yet So wouldn't it be cool to have a mission in star field where you go into the Skyrim universe and people in that universe? Obviously, you can't show them laser weapons anything. Yeah advanced so you have to actually go
00:14:29
Speaker
garb yourself in costumes of the time and use weapons of the time, but you could still use like dragon breath. So if they could import yeah those special powers, that'd be super fun. yeah I could definitely get behind that. You know, and judging based on what I've seen from the modding community so far, this right here, what you were talking about, is not difficult at all. It's not about importing Skyrim. It's about, number one, they already have Melee in the game.
00:15:00
Speaker
so So boom, like you have outfits that are different from your space armor. So you could land on a planet. You're like, okay, I don't want to scare of these people. or the Or they won't accept me if I'm wearing technology. So yeah, you have outfits that are different from space armor. So you take off the armor. You're wearing an outfit that looks like Skyrim. You already have melee in the game. So that's all you can use. And it looks like a regular iron sword. It's totally possible. And then you're right, in Skyrim they have the dragon shouts. in starfield do you have the the starborn powers this seems very doable simple yeah when it comes to modding it's like showing up on the constant in the bug outfit like are you an alien you're not really an alien are you
00:15:48
Speaker
Have you seen that yeah that dialogue option? Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that that. Spoiler. I love that people figured that out pretty quick. Yeah. um the There's a fun alien costume. You know, what's weird is I've I've seen people talk about that they finished that mission and had to give the costume back. Hmm. I don't know, because when I the first time I played the game, when I finished that mission, I still had it in my inventory. So I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. That doesn't seem like very Bethesda to me. Maybe there's different endings. Yeah, there could be. Generally in Bethesda games, you do a mission and whatever you get, you get to keep. um But, oh well. Yeah, i would I would love to see some of this stuff made. I agree that if it's a lot of work, yeah, I don't need to try and play the entire Skyrim game. Yeah.
00:16:38
Speaker
Like, for instance, dragons, I don't i don't know. Like, i'm sure, it's all part of the creation engine, so maybe you could get dragons in there. I mean, there are creatures. Actually, yeah, there are alien fauna and creatures, so maybe it's not as hard as I'm thinking, but yeah. Whether it's hard or not is not our concern. If someone wants to spend a year, 16 hours a day, putting Skyrim inside of Starfield, so be it, let them. That's their passion. Yeah. Now, yeah is it necessary, I guess, or is it needed?
00:17:14
Speaker
From my point of view, what will happen is I would jump into it for the lulz, right? You would just go to see it, ha ha, that's cool someone did it. And then probably, I don't know, unless it's compelling or adds significant gameplay, that's it. And so to me, it's not worth it unless it's like adding to the actual story. You know what I think would be worth it is taking the Starfield engine and just making Skyrim over again in the
Starfield Mod Preferences
00:17:50
Speaker
updated graphics. Like if you're going to go through that trouble, I would love that. Yeah. Yes. Just just give me Skyrim updated basically.
00:17:57
Speaker
I guess they do have a lot of reskins and things like that as mods available anyway, but they do. But you sort of have to experiment with tons and tons of mods. And I've done this with Skyrim because I've played it so much. Yeah, you start finding different mods that change things up. It's still it takes a lot of work to find the right collection of mods and the right combination of mods. It can be overwhelming for someone who doesn't do a lot of mods. If you're doing mods all the time, it's not a big deal. You don't mind. It's kind of fun. But for your average Joe who just wants to download a simple mod and have that experience, you're right. It's not as easy as it as it should be.
00:18:41
Speaker
Honestly, the most immersion breaking thing for me now with Skyrim is this like they have like six voice actors that play like hundreds of characters. And I'm i'm probably embellishing a little bit, but. man, it's like, there's there's one part of the story in Skyrim, it's like this side mission, where you're talking to someone that's that's, he's one of the most famous, he's the voice of Nick Valentine, and he's wonderful, I love this guy, I love this guy. It's on Bethesda for making him play, he plays this character that's like this villain in the story, and then you immediately after talking to him, you go and talk to another character that's not him,
00:19:24
Speaker
and it's the same actor and and it's like I'm fine with like you you know he plays a few different characters in starfield as well but they're spread out right like it's it's enough that you're you're not going you're not talking About that character with the same boy. It's just yeah, that's that's the biggest thing in Skyrim for me is just like Not the one kid one kid skin. Yeah with different air off are we Are we convinced are we convinced that?
00:20:01
Speaker
they that that was an accident and now they just they just can't change it because they can because it's already done i don't know i still want some kind of like gameplay element similar to like launching an arrow straight up and having it impale somebody like through the skull directly from above right in starfield like i want that in starfield somehow Wait a minute, yeah, okay, so that that was incredible. I mean, I guess you can you can go above them with a jet pack, but like if you're just standing on the ground, you should be able to like melee, launch a knife up into the air, and dink. Ooh, see, and that would work with... ah i I didn't even think of that. Throwing knives. That would that would work with the the lore. That would be cool if they used the upcoming Shattered Space DLC. Yes. two and yeah Like, if anyone would use throwing knives, it would be the Varun. Right? i would I would think. Or just let me launch a sword and then retrieve it after I throw it. Yeah. I mean, not that that's an effective thing in real life, but hey, it's a video game. Let me have some fun.
00:21:11
Speaker
So I've been recently playing a lot of Dead Island 2 again. Yeah, it was on sale for a Steam summer sale, right? Oh, but you had already purchased it. So I had already bought it and I hadn't played the DLC and that was on sale. So finally I got that. So the DLC is really ah fun. The first one's just like sort of this weird art exhibit house cult thing. But then the second DLC is a is a music festival that got hit with, you know, this zombie stuff. um Super fun.
00:21:46
Speaker
And they have what you're talking about, where you can have a melee weapon and throw it at a zombie and then retrieve it again. so Yeah, definitely. That's super fun. And if you've ever been to EDC here in Vegas, you know, on that last day, people are walking around like zombies. So I probably get where they got the inspiration from. Yeah, yeah. Whether or not Project Tamriel comes back, you know, we're really seeing some interesting stuff with mods. Like mods have been a part of Starfield on PC ever since it came out, but now with CreationKit,
00:22:26
Speaker
Officially out, you know having that official support makes a huge difference and It hasn't even been that long but like things are really kind of blowing up like in a good way Yeah, you said you tried a few mods in the last couple weeks, right? I did. I have all the achievements. I've been through the game several times. So definitely I've been checking out mods. Oh, can I interrupt you real quick? I wanted to give a shout out to the video that you made last week regarding the Vulture mission. Oh, yeah. That was a really cool video. Actually, truth be told, I
00:23:05
Speaker
started it and then I was like I haven't actually played the mission yet so I can't finish the video until until I actually do the mission but what I saw so far looked amazing. No, I appreciate that. What I did with that video, for anyone listening that hasn't seen it, I played the the mission and I recorded clips and I sort of assembled these clips to make it a little bit more cinematic. So um very like it opens up very trailer-style, hard-hitting, quick. It's really nice to see these comments. So there there are certain people that that comment and really appreciate it.
00:23:44
Speaker
Honestly, I would love to do more of these. They don't get that many views. So it's it's always tough to know if there's not. It is a fairly recent right addition to the game. So it could be people like me where it's like, oh, I can't watch this yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that could be part of it. Yeah. Not that there's not interest in it, but it's just that YouTube isn't pushing that content. So there is that part of me that says, hey, sure some people like this. I'll keep making more, and we'll see if if YouTube finally decides to push it. But yeah, thanks for thanks for bringing that up. If you haven't seen it, check out the link in the show notes. Yeah, they're fun.
00:24:24
Speaker
you mentioned that you downloaded and tried some mods but then you actually went back to vanilla starfield what was up with that if you're listening i would love to hear your comments on this because there's a whole psychology to mods i think number one there's a psychology to people ah like what type of mods they get. So this is what's been fascinating about watching our our community and watching the Discord is seeing what types of mods people get. Some people will download these entire like ship sets. Modders have created an entire line, almost like an entire ship company. So you can get these pieces and assemble new ships that look like nothing in the game so far.
00:25:10
Speaker
and then other people are getting. A lot of those are aesthetic. So if you want like cool looking wings on the outside, yeah kind of Star Wars-esque or maybe a smoothed off fuselage, whatever it is, yeah this is how you do it. Yeah, until we get that addition in the game. I mean, there could be a DLC just for ships, which i'm I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure that they'll they'll do that. But yeah, then you've got people that are getting, you know, new outfits, new looks. Some people, a lot of their characters sort of almost look like ah cyberpunk characters now. Yeah. Which I think still fits within the lore of Starfield. I think that people would look that way. Some of them. Right.
00:25:54
Speaker
But anyway, there's that psychology, I think, of seeing what people choose to mod, and then my own psychology, which I don't even quite understand, where I try out all these mods and then I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go back to my vanilla character. And I have this character that's now level 116. I love mods, I'm not anti-mod, but I don't want to mod that character. Okay. i i For some reason. It feels like cheating. It feels like you're muddying the waters. What do you think it is? Oh, see, that could be it. So definitely, number one, I don't ever want to feel like I'm cheating. So I definitely never get anything in mods to you know like cheat room or whatever. Some people do and that's great. It's just to have fun. I've seen amazing mods that are like new powers. Like people are developing new powers. That I would download. See, you're talking about what people download says a lot about them. I do. I like the UI improvement mods yeah and I like the power.
00:26:59
Speaker
Like I'm interested in those different powers. That's and then probably visual would be a third. Yeah. So I love I love the visual mods as a person on Xbox. I've actually I started messing around with mods that would like. lower the amount of crowd NPCs in the cities for what reason does that frame rate improvement or yeah basically ever since starfield themselves updated the game with the fps 60 frames per second mode it's ran great except
00:27:36
Speaker
in the cities. So in Akila and in certain spots, well many spots in New Atlantis, the frame rate can get really bogged down. I've messed around with these mods that sort of like remove god rays and like certain things that I kind of don't even notice and it will sort of like lower the shadow detail like at a certain distance. I was trying to get all these sort of things that ah alter the graphics in indiscernible ways to try to get the frame rate down. Like, I want it to just be super smooth. I don't think that's going to happen in New Atlantis. Yeah. Especially. I got a pretty good mod that actually helps that. Oh, OK.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah, a PC. Of course, yeah. I think I mentioned the frame rate and trying to get it down in one of our videos. And somebody commented and said, well, now that you can open your scanner and fast travel to the shop you want to go to, in New Atlantis. it's kind of i won't Why are you walking? Yeah. it's not I won't say it's a moot point, because someone's going to say, well, what about my immersion? I get it. Right. There's a ah loading screen there, though, right? Yeah. That's a bummer. you still what Yeah. You don't want that. Is it worth it? I mean. I think it is. yeah It's a quick loading screen. okay These load loading screens are so fast. I guess it depends on what you're playing on. but
00:29:02
Speaker
Loading screens on Series X are fast, so it's whatever. I think another thing that you mentioned about muddying the waters, I think I start to feel
Psychology of Modding
00:29:11
Speaker
that way. Once I start modding too much, because right now I'm doing like the hardest difficulties. the I never want to feel like a mod is then making it easier for some reason. right you know That's why people love Elden Ring because it is a challenge. They don't want to
00:29:36
Speaker
feel like they've, if you beat the final boss in Elder Ring, or if you beat any boss, you get this sense of euphoria yeah because it is hard yeah and you and you know that you were good enough to get to that point. Same thing with Starfield. Like if you're seeking out and wanting to play what the designers implemented, yeah then you don't ever want to feel like the the mod is is helping you in any way until until you've played the game so much. And i have I have a friend, shout out to Duncan, who has played Skyrim.
00:30:11
Speaker
Gosh, since it came out, how long has Skyrim been out? I mean, it's been over 10, it's been over a decade, for sure. He has been playing this game over a decade, like a lot, every day probably, for 10 years. so And I think a person like that who just absolutely loves a game like Skyrim or Starfield, whatever it is, and you want to extend the game in a new way, that's where I'm gonna be downloading mods. I think that's my, mod ideology is bringing freshness and new things into the game. But I'm like you right now, like I have no mods enabled because I do feel like it's going to muddy the waters a little bit in terms of getting that experience that the designers laid out from the start. Yes, isn't there? ah There's a feeling I get where if I see something cool, a really nice detail or something happens,
00:31:05
Speaker
ah For some reason, it bothers me to to think, oh, did that happen because of a mod I have installed? Or is that part of the original game? Right. So yeah, I agree. Why why is everybody's booty huge? I mean, was that intended? Or is that the mod that I installed? Super thick. ah Yeah, everyone is thick. That is definitely the mod you installed. oh Mystery solved. Sidebar so I'm reading the New York Times as as one my age does yeah in newspaper form no less nice Wow classic can't believe I said that out loud But physical paper there was an article. It's so funny because that the it's not the New York Times. Sorry it was ah
00:31:51
Speaker
What's the real stuff? Wall Street Journal. Oh, yeah. It's the real stuffy one. I was going to say, yeah, that's the way it works.
00:31:59
Speaker
And ah in the entertainment section, there's an article about how back that as up has stood the test of time and continues to to do well and keep people dancing. But it's just so funny to to see that in the Wall Street Journal. I don't know. Yeah, maybe yeah I wouldn't yeah would not be expecting that um out of that newspaper. Yeah. Right. And this has been your booty segment for Starfield with normal people. That's right. Booty segment. I've played so much Skyrim and I don't think I'm done yet. There's there's times where I'm like,
00:32:37
Speaker
You might roll another character. But I feel that way with Starfield. And Starfield's only been out a year, but man, the fact that, number one, I've gotten all the achievements, I've played it several times. And you got the back tattoo. I got the yeah i got the the lower back tattoo, yeah. ah No regret. As soon as I started getting sort of tired of like, I've done this mission before, I'm kind of done with this yeah for now. Man, i the other day, when I was playing Starfield, I then just went back to exploring planets. Like I would just find a random planet and I'm i'm just like, I'm gonna scan all the fauna. I'm gonna scan everything and just get it fully scanned. And that's what I- For me, that's like a three hour proposition. Yeah. Because I don't have the scanner. I have one scanner upgrade. Oh yeah. Which gives you distance. So like just what you just said is like, that's a chunk of gameplay.
00:33:29
Speaker
See, for me, it's a little better, yeah, because I have all my, this character has all the scanner upgrades. Yeah,
Exploring Planets in Starfield
00:33:36
Speaker
much easier. Point is, oh, okay, so you can actually scan, can you scan from space then? Well, or you can do, yeah, I have all this, I have those as well. You still have to land on the planet to scan Fauna and and and Flora. I can scan like a planet in the next star system, even if without going there, which is nice. cool My point is that I get down on this random planet and I just start exploring.
00:34:02
Speaker
And I'm just like, yeah, I love this. I love this game. Don't see myself getting sick of it because like Skyrim, there's always a different way to play it. Right. That's a good point. I've literally spent the last three or four play sessions. in Aquila City. That's, I haven't even left the city. So there's been enough gameplay just in that one city to get me through like the last week and a half, I guess. And doesn't it feel so different, right? Like, and and that's like, I mean, tell me if you agree, but there was a time I was playing Starfield where I was, I decided I'm going to stay in neon and I'm going to do all of this stuff in neon.
00:34:45
Speaker
And it feels like a totally different game from when you go to Akila and you're hanging out there. Right. You have that whole stealth mission line with a Reugin, which is a very different way that I had been playing the game up to that point. So it did it definitely felt different. Yeah. So I just, I love that and I love that essentially you can then then just choose a planet, go out and start playing, basically start playing Minecraft. Although farming, give me farming. Oh yeah, give me farming. I still feel like I have not even scratched the surface of outposts.
00:35:24
Speaker
So I'm gonna reserve, I'm gonna withhold saying that there's not a farming element because there is a little bit of a farming element in the outpost room. It could be could be more, for sure. And now a word from Oliver, our moderator for our shipbuilding channel and Discord drive. Hey there, dear spacefarers. This is Olivier Le Perat. Glad to be here. Thank you so much for letting me hack into the podcast. I'm here to talk to you about the Drive initiatives. What's the Drive initiative? ah Well, since the game has been launched, there's a lot of shipbuilding enthusiasts on the Discord server. We used to do a weekly challenge to try to build ah spaceships based on weekly themes.
00:36:09
Speaker
However, we figured you know we learned a few things along the way. We learned that shipbuilding in-game is pretty costly. and Also, we learned that even if you have a lot of imaginations and very various teams, it can get repetitive. Good news is, ah since the mods dropped on Xbox, there's no reason not to start that again, because there's much more that we can do now. So, I'm happy to announce that the Drive Initiative is restarting, it's going to be a monthly challenge, and as it was the case before, ah the themes will be dropped every four Sundays now, and everyone is welcome,
00:36:48
Speaker
And there's gonna be three prizes for the winners. So join the Discord server, keep your eyes open. We're gonna drop a challenge soon in the Drive channel. Good luck with your shipbuilding obsession and happy building. Bye. Thank you so much, Oliver. Great to hear from him. And yeah if you are interested in Drive, definitely jump into our Discord. It's free. It's pretty cash. And you could join the monthly Drive challenge. Let me tell you about this, because i don't with I don't think we've talked about this yet. In a recent interview, Todd Howard said that Shattered Space, that DLC, when asked about how it was going to be set up, like if it was going to be like across several planets, Todd Howard said that most of the DLC, or all of it,
00:37:40
Speaker
will be in one giant handcrafted cell.
Anticipation for Shattered Space DLC
00:37:45
Speaker
So you know, when you land on a planet, it loads up a procedurally generated cell. He is claiming, and it reminds me of Aquila, that's what made me think of it. Like, you know, and in one of the early missions of Aquila, you have to go to a cave that's just, you know, down that away. So it's throw away. Yeah. And so of course you don't get in a ship, you jet pack your way across the land, And apparently the shattered space DLC is going to be a lot of stuff and a lot of POIs in a giant ah generation of land is what I'm saying. I love that. Yeah, because I love it too. Yes. It avoids the a lot of the criticisms when the game first came out of
00:38:34
Speaker
getting places and loading screens and things like that. yeah So if you're in the same cell the entire time and you have, say, 50 hours of content to go through, that's gonna be amazing. That's gonna be really fun. I didn't know that I wanted that. Until he said that and I the more I thought about I was just like wow. Yeah, that's great I would love to see more of that in the future This storyline is all here. That was one of my biggest problems with Skyrim when I was playing survival mode Mm-hmm. Yeah a mission would be like go across the map and then come back and tell me what you saw and It's you know much of that and it's just like I would rather play a game Skyrim wise
00:39:18
Speaker
I want to like start in this town and do all this stuff for the people there and then move on to the next town. Well, in a sandbox and procedurally generated game, you get distracted so easily. So it's like, yeah, go fly across the universe and do this and then come back. Well, I'm going to run into some other things to do. And then by the time I get back to you, The story fades and the experience is watered down a little bit. So you're right. I think being within the same city or within that same cell, as he called it.
00:39:55
Speaker
That's going to deepen the immersion for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Should we talk about some of the polls that we've done in our
Negativity in Gaming Communities
00:40:03
Speaker
discord? And by the way, if you have not joined our discord, it's kind of a, it's a safe space for fans of starfield. There's, it really is. There's a lot of negativity out there on the, on the internet, just people trying to get clicks. Who knows if they even really believe the. the incendiary ah you know YouTube channel or titles that they come up with about how terrible everything is.
00:40:26
Speaker
Here's what you need to know if you are not a YouTuber. We all use tools, tools of the trade that tell us, hey, this video is doing well. This type of title would do really well. We use those tools, but we are not we're not slaves to those tools because, man, sometimes our services will kick me a title idea. And it'll be like, all the problems with Starfield. It tells me, hey, you know, this video would probably do pretty well. And Dwayne and I, we don't succumb to that nonsense, but I'm telling you, like, a lot of YouTubers. Until now. Yeah.
00:41:06
Speaker
A lot of YouTubers, like if that a new announcement if that's your career, if that's if your career is YouTube, a lot of times you're going to just sort of pick up on whatever is going to get you the most clicks and the most views. And sadly, as we can see generally on the internet, that's going to be negativity. But yes, our Discord? Man, I know you're hearing it from us, but we see people come into our Discord all the time and they are so excited by the fact that it's just a bunch of really awesome people talking about games that they love, especially Starfield.
00:41:45
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I do want to warn anyone that hasn't joined yet. There's a lot of memes. We talk in meme quite often. So it, you know, we try to limit in some cases to certain channels, but yeah, if you're in a meeting, check it out. um But yeah, in our Discord we've been running these polls, which i these are really interesting to
Favorite Constellation Members
00:42:08
Speaker
see. Yeah. So the first poll that we should talk about is we said, who is your favorite member or members of Constellation? If you're riding in your car right now, if you're driving, I want you to just go ahead and say the name that you think yeah the number one ah vote was. Yeah.
00:42:26
Speaker
Okay, now that you've said it, Michael, who was the who is the favorite member of Constellation? The favorite member of Constellation, and this is out of not just the ones that you can hang with, but I i put everyone in this poll. So it was Barrett, Sarah, Sam, Andresia, Noel, Mateo, Walter, Vladimir, and Vasco, and the winner was Andresia. Yeah. Not surprising. Yeah, not surprised by that at all. I thought it would be close between her and Sarah, and I was actually surprised by the second place folk getter, which was, which was Vasco. Yeah, that was a surprise for me. I mean, I dig Vasco. Yeah, but I thought for sure Sarah would be I know Sarah kind of angers a lot of people with disliking because she is so goody two shoes. Yeah.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah, but you have to know that about her to to understand her but actually she got Fourth place. Yeah, she was she was up there. She was up there. Mm-hmm Barrett came in third. Yeah Barrett was third Generally, the top ones were people that you can take with you as companions The highest that was non companion was Vladimir. So I found that interesting and Yeah. Have you gone around with Vlad at all? Well, but you can't, right? Like, he's... Oh, right. Well, I mean, like, so... That's what I thought. I was like, I thought he was stuck in the eye the whole time. Like, I didn't know you could even go anywhere with him. Yeah, no, you can't. So that's what I found interesting. It's just your favorite. It's not your favorite companion. It's just your favorite member of Constellation.
00:44:00
Speaker
Right. So what I'm saying is that he was the highest is not my favorite. He was the highest voted that is someone that you cannot take with you as a companion. Right. I found that surprising now because my personal favorite and I'm going to ask you your favorite also of of the ones that cannot go with you. My favorite is Noel. Or Noel. I think it's Noel. Noel. Maybe it's Noelle. Is it female? Yeah. So she's the scientist. It's Noelle. It's Noelle, yeah. So Noelle, I'm saying she's my favorite and I can't even pronounce her name. I got confused, okay? and She's got a great voice actor. She's very interested in science. She's very fascinated by all that stuff. Honestly, she kind of reminds me of Sarah in a way, like with just how excited she is about the artifacts and stuff.
00:44:52
Speaker
I would love DLC that let me take Noel with me as a companion. Sure. I don't know that I could answer that because I have never paid too much mind to any of the non-companion constellation members. They're just kind of background actors and Mateo, I guess, would probably be my pick. Oh, interesting. like character exploration might be an interesting person, because he's he's got a religious kind of approach. Yeah, at least he's he's like a different yeah he's got a different flavor and a different perspective, which I agree does. It it is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. and And then I could launch him right out the pod bay door if I got tired of whatever he was saying. He keeps trying to debate you like constantly. Not right now until.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, later later potato Anyone who's progressed in the story will ah know that also there is a brief time that you actually can take Walter he Walter Becomes a temporary companion. So I know it's possible. I know it's possible and What's kind of fun? this is what I like about this and and I've never done this with starfield but I I could be wrong, somebody correct me, but I think you could get Walter with you as a temporary companion for that story and then just ignore the story. And then just complete it. Yeah.
00:46:29
Speaker
I'll have to tell would to try that. Yeah, I'll have to test that out. I feel like you could do that. I mean, he's not a super amiable character. He's kind of this like stuffy older business guy. Yeah. Who's Kurt. And, you know, I wouldn't say downright rude, but um not exactly a fun yeah sort of fight along buddy, if you will. Yeah, he he is interesting enough, though. I like that he wasn't um he's he's fleshed out enough. that he he's interesting, but yeah, not not as much as, of course, the main four or plus Vasco. I should make a slight retraction. I think it was last episode we talked about how sometimes companions are, I'm not really counting on them to help me fight my battles. Right. I'm melee. Yeah. I'm up and close and personal and like sprinting or not sprint well sprinting and trying to close distance between enemies. So I usually don't even see my companions.
00:47:26
Speaker
Well, one of our discord members, and I apologize, I don't have it in front of me here, but they basically said, yeah, if you get the right equipment, your companion can be amazing. You can actually just sit back and let them take out the baddies for you. So that's true. Slight retraction on my part on saying they're, they're not exactly excellent, uh, fighting, you know, friends or companions or. What you need to know is you can't just give them a weapon. You've got to give them a weapon and then give them at least one ammo.
00:47:57
Speaker
that works for that weapon. right In addition to that, randomly, and it's so rare to see, I think, but randomly, your you could be you could kill a bunch of enemies and your teammate, your companion will actually sometimes loot a body and pick up a better weapon. i've seen that I feel like I've seen that in Fallout, too. Yeah, yeah. And a funny thing that reminds me of Fallout is, Sometimes when you're trading with your companion and you accidentally take all their stuff and you leave them with like no weapon and then you see them running around with a garbage weapon, you're like, what happened to that amazing weapon? the Oh, yeah, it's actually in my inventory. yeah I forgot to give it back to you. Sorry about that. Yep. They've run up and they're just punching people. We also did a poll for your favorite places to visit in Starfield.
Favorite Starfield Locations
00:48:50
Speaker
Yeah. The places that we listed are Aquila City, Sedonia on Mars, Gagarin Landing, Hopetown, Neon, New Atlantis, New Homestead, Paradiso, and the Key. Yes. You know, I have never even been to Gagarin Landing? Where is that? Gagarin Landing. I don't think I've been there. Oh, I stumped Michael. I can't believe it. I want to say i want to say it's in like the soul system.
00:49:18
Speaker
It's in the Alpha Centauri system. Oh, it's on the planet Gagarin in the Alpha Centauri system. So it's pretty close to home if your home is New Atlantis. It's like a full-on little town. Well, it's a mining settlement. So the early in it's a couple it was established in the early years of colonization. So what was the number one favorite place to visit in Starfield? So it looks like the number one, it was actually a tie. And this is revealing some things about our community. That it was a tie between neon and the key, which is where the pirates hang out. Yeah, looks like we got some pirates in our midst. Yeah, we sure do. Like, what what do you what do you think of this result? And and what would you have chosen?
00:50:06
Speaker
I think I would have gone with the key I don't remember if I voted on this one or not, because it's just such a cool environment. I love how you can walk through the space station, you can see, yeah, outside of it. It's really well done. and then The inside is pretty cool too with like your little vendor section and then you've got like the bridge part of it. It's it's really, it's again, it's just really well done. Neon, of course, is the seedy underbelly, the cyberpunk a city, if you will. Yeah. And it is definitely cool as well. So I get that.
00:50:42
Speaker
I found it interesting that Paradiso ah was actually very low in the votes. It was not a whole lot there. i mean You got the beach and you got the hotel and the landing pad. That's it. That is true. It's cool when you first go there, but it's not a whole lot to really play with. Yeah, I think if it were more fleshed out, I would I'd really like that missed opportunity with the CD underbelly storyline of like this perfect, you know, place. I think yeah so many people went into Paradiso thinking.
00:51:17
Speaker
there's something weird here. And then you so hiding where yeah they're hiding yeah you see the employee section just outside of the hotel, but then there's, unless I missed it, there's no real storyline there, right? There's a few missions. You have to sort of dig for them, but there's a few missions that you can do that take you around, you know. um Yeah, there's still not a lot. Yeah, there's the finding, finding stuff mission that you get from the desk clerk and the whole like constant, um you know, they want to use that planet. Yeah, there's that. I know that there was something where I had to go talk to someone up on the roof, but now it's been so ah so long. Yeah, you have to spy on somebody up there.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah. You have to eavesdrop or something about a, r was it the recipe one where you're trying to steal the recipe from for a terror brew or? That's what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is. Yeah, I would like to see it more fleshed out. That's true. But I agree that the key doesn't surprise me because it's such an atmospheric place and it is very well done. Yeah. We do have one final poll to talk about. um Now this was, what are you looking forward to most in the Shattered Space DLC?
Community Expectations for DLC
00:52:36
Speaker
And boy, we have a lot of options here. It was new story content, new weapons, new powers, new companions, new land vehicles.
00:52:45
Speaker
Well, we don't have any land vehicles yet, but maybe... A land vehicle. he Yeah. ah New ships, new locations, new gear and suits, new enemies and bosses, and new chunks, flavors. I love that last one. You want to tell me what's winning at the time of this recording? Yeah, absolutely. It is new story content at 22 percent. And I think I chose new story content and new land vehicles, because I think we could vote on more than one option. Yeah. The Shatterspace DLC is obviously going to bring that new story content. So that's going to please a lot of people. So many people are hyped about some way to travel besides the jetpack.
00:53:31
Speaker
So I can understand why ah new land vehicles was chosen as the second option in terms of popularity. And you said this one is still going, right? There's two days left. this one's Yeah, as of this recording, two days left. New locations, very high in the votes, ah which with what we talked about. is very exciting to me as well. If you guys have a poll idea, let us know and we can throw one in here on your behalf. When this episode goes live, we will have a brand new poll that I would love for you to go participate in. Click on the Discord link and go to the Polls channel.
00:54:07
Speaker
What I want to know is if you could only have one type of weapon, one weapon class that you carried, what is your favorite? And so we're talking shotguns, pistols, melee, but just love to see how everyone's rolling. I'd probably go with a shotgun because even though I'm a full melee build, they still haven't brought melee around to where it should be in this game. I agree. It is pretty fun to blast people with a shotgun. Yeah. Got to go with that. I'm going to tell you right now, my answer is pistols.
00:54:41
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I love a good strong modded pistol. It's got that John Wick flavor that I really like. Yep. Do they have a like a spinning twirling animation? They should. Oh, they should yeah they totally should. They should ah yeah have some animations for the guns. the There was this period in in game evolution, probably late 90s, early 2000s, where idle animations for guns was over the top. It was like quite to doom some of these early, maybe it was like Far Cry first person shooters or open world shooters where it was like, if you weren't shooting, you were twirling your gun, you were like wiping mud off of it. There was like so many animations. You don't see them as much anymore.
00:55:35
Speaker
Yeah, you don't on the way of the dodo bird. I want to bring it back because it was fun. I think it's battlefield. Have you seen how it will have a unique? reload animation that is so rare. It's like one in a thousand or one in ten thousand, something like that, right? And you if you haven't seen this and you're listening, look, look this up because battlefield rare animations, reload animations, because what will happen is you'll be playing the game. You'll be online.
00:56:07
Speaker
and then you'll reload and it will do something whack something so insane and because of how rare it is it usually takes the player by surprise right very very fun that's really cool because you know somebody spent a month building that animation and to only dole it out on the super rare occasion it's like an easter egg it's finding something in the game i love that yeah i'd love to see more of that kind of stuff in starfield yeah surprise us we love being surprised pleasantly surprised not frustratingly surprised
00:56:41
Speaker
All right. Well, I think we're going to close it out for this week's episode. Huge thanks to anyone who is helping us out supporting the show on our Patreon. So if you like the show, you like our channel, you like what we're doing, that's how you can come in and show your thanks and also get access to some freebies and you get early access to the show. You also get an ad free. It's our way of saying thanks. We've got some new people that I want to thank. So Pete recently joined as well as Bergenstock. Bergenstock and Pete, thank you so much. Especially thank you Bergenstock joining as a legendary member. And I want to give thanks as we do every episode to our legendaries. Yeah, I used to have some Bergenstocks back in the 90s.
00:57:28
Speaker
Yeah. Mm-hmm. That was all the rage. Those were big. those were Those were really big. They were really big for me, size 14. Well, those legendaries are, as always, Zegorok's, Griffin, Cherry Bomb Rn, Rampage American X, Kidolahara, Space Cadet 829, Brian, and Bergenstock. Thank you once again. And yeah, if you want to get ad-free content, you know what? It's as low as a dollar a month. So check it out. absolutely and thanks so much to everyone that supports us and watches us and leaves comments on our youtube channel definitely uh jump in our discord i do want to shout out drive once again if you have any interest in building a ship
00:58:11
Speaker
start this Sunday. We're going to announce a new contest and you could be the recipient of our very first Drive mug. It's a really cool design. We kind of all came together in the in the Drive channel, came up with a logo, which is Drive Into the Stars. That's right. This logo was community driven and community created. Yep, absolutely. So check it out. And if you like the show, consider dropping a five star review on your favorite podcast app. That would really help us out. Thank you for traversing the star field with us. Make sure you subscribe because we will be back for more. That's right. We'll see you then.